Not hard. We have a 7 year old box turtle. It has its own cleaning supplies (including a colander for washing the rocks in its habitat) that aren't used for anything else. And the kids know to wash their hands after doing anything turtle related.

No sickness in 7 years and my youngest is only slightly older than the turtle.

Rawhead Rex:I find this amusing because I just bought...well, my wife just bought a tiny turtle for my 10 year old daughter this past Saturday at the flea market.

Now, it seems, we're all going to die.

Pity.

Aww, those itty bitty ones are cute. Most of them don't make it, though, unfortunately. They usually come with a respiratory disease from the shiatty living conditions they're bred in. Here's hoping yours lives to be an ornery old cuss, because there's really no other kind of red ear.

Rawhead Rex:I find this amusing because I just bought...well, my wife just bought a tiny turtle for my 10 year old daughter this past Saturday at the flea market.

Now, it seems, we're all going to die.

Pity.

You can ignore this lecture if you're a responsible pet owner. Your post was just convenient to quote.

Please...do some research if you haven't already to find out how to care for it properly. I do rescue/rehab for reptiles and amphibians and a very large percentage of the turtles I get were abandoned by owners who bought them on a whim, didn't realize the amount of care they required, and dumped them. Many, many others are victims of a bad diet, lack of UV light, and generally inappropriate living conditions.

Also, find a reptile vet in your area - a real reptile vet, not some person who had one class about reptiles in vet school and thinks he knows what he's doing.

That's what I'm wondering. I had countless opportunities, growing up, to contract nasty infections. Somehow I survived my pet and livestock-filled childhood unscathed. Then again, there were no pet turtles. Yeah, that must be it.

I had a pet turtle as a child (we gave him away once he got too big since, you know, we wanted not to be cruel to him). I don't know if I was just more uselessly educated on trivial things than other children but I washed my hands before and after handling my turtle. I knew it had salmonella, and while I didn't know what it did exactly, I knew it was a bacteria and thus could get me sick. Simple rule: wash before and after.

Never got sick.

My parents and family emphasized the washing of hands after touching animals in general though.

FTA ...prompted a crackdown on the illegal sale of the tiny pets. Last month, cops in Maryland busted two vendors....

WELL, thankfully police raids are now involved in quelling this out of control pandemic. Look, if people can't handle the dangers of "nature," they should stay away from it. But to legislate against turles and waste taxpayer dollars on investigations is just stupid.

My wife adopted a red eared slider someone in her office brought in from a construction site. That was about 5 years ago. Now we've got her in a 75 gallon tank with two filters, UV and natural spectrum lighting and a homemade basking platform. She eats collard leaves, turtle food and the occasional bug we drop in, plus shrimp tails and sometimes minnows we buy at the pet store. Gamera (yes that's what my wife named her) is about 6 pounds now and nearly 10" across....

I didn't RTFA. But I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume that it's not the turtles themselves but the salmonilla that they have all over them. And for this, it means it's only turtles that live in water.

I remember when I worked in pet shops years ago, the rule of thumb was that if the turtle was under 4 inches, you had to wash you hands immediately after handling it. Honestly, I can't see the point of the 4 inch rule. Unless, I guess, if you consider if it was that small, it likely came from Mexico.

Fun story...My son really wanted a turtle last year. So we went out to the middle of nowhere where there is a swamp. He says, "ok, dad... Where do we find a turtle?" So, I looked down, and found one walking across the path. "Right here." :) It was a musk turtle. He named her Chloe.

So we kept the turtle over the summer, and she led a reasonably good life. The only real problem was the leeches. Those things got out of control in the tank. So, at the end of the summer, we set her free. We then proceeded to fill the tank with bleach and leave it like that for a few days. Then we let it dry out, and bleached it again.

The tank now contains a small population of tropicals that are causing no trouble at all, and seem perfectly happy. And there was never an issue with salmonilla.

I've owned a turtle for 12 years (same turtle). He lives a great life and is going into hibernation now. Like others my parents knew they had salmonella and my brother and I always washed our hands after taking him out of the tank. Never had a problem.

telephone:I've owned a turtle for 12 years (same turtle). He lives a great life and is going into hibernation now. Like others my parents knew they had salmonella and my brother and I always washed our hands after taking him out of the tank. Never had a problem.

/love my turtle//not sure why people buy pets on a whim

I bought a betta on a whim, once. Does that count? He lived a good, long life, too. Great fish. I still miss him.